Hans Hofmann German-American, 1880-1966

Hans Hofmann's vivid paintings of geometric and irregular forms bridged the concerns of early modernist movements with the tenets of Abstract Expressionism that dominated art discourse in the mid-20th century. While he originally worked in a more figurative mode, Hofmann developed a signature style that wove together Cubist forms with the electric color palettes of Fauvism; he was most interested in what he called the "push and pull" between color, form, and space in the picture plane (via Artsy).

Hofmann was interested in using colour and abstract, gestural forms to represent nature - "the origin of art, for Hofmann, lies in nature… a philosophy of nature underlies every aspect of his art." Paysage (Landscape) exemplifies this aspect of his work. It is a bright, dynamic abstract landscape painted in casein (a dairy-based pigment) on panel. The nature of the paint gives the work a luminous appearance, and the drips of blue and green were a direct influence on the American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock. 

In 1934, just two years after Hofmann emigrating to the US, he established the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York in 1934. A year later began a summer school at Provincetown, Massachusetts. Paysage was painted in 1935, the year that Hofmann established his Provincetown school. A 1963 MoMA catalogue describes how his 1935 paintings came "after a long period working only on drawings."

Throughout his career, Hofmann was enormously influential as both a teacher and a painter. He is often cited as one of the key figures of Abstract Expressionism. He always maintained that his paintings were all about painting as a medium, and as such each brushstroke, line, colour, and so on was loaded with meaning and purpose. Following Hofmann's major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Frederick S. Wight described his work as "a controlled explosion" of colour and energy that hangs in a perfect, natural balance.

Hofmann's works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Tate Gallery, London; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; San Francisco MoMA; the MFA Boston; Städtische Galerie, Munich; Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; among other public and private collections.